


Battlefield Medicine

by cricket_aria



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: Caught by an enemy's lucky blow, Aloy's at risk of bleeding out when Nil follows the path of her violence to where she lies.





	Battlefield Medicine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluspirits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluspirits/gifts).



“That was a mistake,” Aloy grunted to herself. She’d dragged herself away from the corpse of the man who’d managed to get the drop on her, but could only make it far enough to collapse into the safety of the nearest patch of tall grass. “If I’d just been wearing anything other than Blazon armor…”

Her fingers shook as she slid them across her skin, feeling out the wound she didn’t have the stomach to look at yet. She could feel blood slick beneath her fingers well before reaching the spot where she’d been stabbed. She hissed through her teeth when she finally found it, clenched her teeth tightly shut as she brushed her fingers above them then, with distressingly little pressure, inward, the wound wide enough that three were able to fit.

She managed to force a pained laughed, staring up at the sky as felt bits of herself that should never have been touched. “Kinda funny, isn’t it Rost?” she muttered to herself, “If some random slaver is the one to bring me down after everything I’ve been through?”

“Not funny, no,” a voice said from so close that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard its owner approach. She did her best to whip around to face it, only to have to stop and gasp in hard to keep a scream from escaping. As she tried her best to stop her body from shaking against the new burst of pain she still managed to turn her head in the direction of the voice.

Nil was squatting beside the body of the man who’d managed to get his own spear into her, positioned as through her were examining the corpse but with his narrowed eyes fixed on her. When he saw he had her attention he clicked his tongue disapprovingly and shook his head. “Every time we meet lately you seem to do your best to wound me, Aloy. Now you’d give another man the gift of you death?” He did glance down at the body then, nudging an arm like a tree trunk; the man had been built like a trampler, huge and dense. “He might have been a worthy enough fight, but don’t think I’ll forgive you for giving it to him.”

“I’ll tell you what, Nil,” Aloy said, proud to hear her voice stay almost steady, “if you plan to put me out of my misery, I promise I’ll fire my arrows at you every step of the way instead of going down without a fight.” Still, she couldn’t say that she wasn’t glad to see him there. If she did end up dying in the dirt she’d rather it at least not be alone.

“A promise which would be sweeter to my ear if I thought you could draw the string,” he said, and she knew he had a point. “Well!” he hopped suddenly to his feet and crossed the small amount of space between them just to drop back down. He went all the way to his knees this time instead of squatting on the balls of his feet, ready to burst into motion if needed, as he usually did. “There’s only one way to correct this situation, yes? You must not die here.”

“Wasn’t exactly my plan either, Nil,” she said, then blinked it him in surprise when he leaned forward suddenly, almost pressing his face into the wound. “I… I don’t think kissing it to make it better would work,” she joked, hoping it would hide her unease with his sudden closeness.

He breathed in deep against her skin, then sat back again with a pleased expression. There was blood, her blood, dotting the end of his nose, another small smear on his chin, a few patches darkening his scarf where it had fallen forward against her. “Nothing smells foul, your luck stays true or his aim was not. I’ll fix the bleeding, then we can work on recovering you.”

“I didn’t know you knew anything about healing people, Nil,” she said, watching as he dug through his bags then plucked a fire arrow from her own quiver, trying to feel hope even though she knew that just because the spear hadn’t pierced her bowels it didn’t mean the wound couldn’t be just as deadly. “It doesn’t seem like you’d be interested.”

“I’ve been on many battlefields. Spend time on the battlefield, learn battlefield medicine.” He cracked open a bottle of blaze and drizzled a stream onto her stomach, then smiled at her all teeth and bright eyes. “After you feel this you might finally want to give me that fight, even though it really is the only way I know to stop this much bleeding,” he told her brightly, before lighting the arrow and pressing it to the blaze.

If anyone had ever asked her Aloy would have said that she was well acquainted with what it felt like to be burned. Plenty of the machines she fought used fire as one of their weapons after all, and beneath her armor multiple spots on her body were streaked and pocked with marks from it. But always before she’d only burned for moments, bursts of flame catching her as she sprinted and rolled around her targets only to quickly be put out again.

This time, with the blaze on her skin to feed it, it went on and on. She’d been so careful to make no loud noise in her pain since being stabbed, nothing that could draw any nearby machines to her position when she was in no condition to fight them, but any thought of them flew out of her head in the fact of the mind-devouring pain and when she opened her mouth to scream the only thing which held it back now was something being forced between her open lips. She bit down hard on it and tasted blood.

Then finally, mercifully, the pain grew to be too much and it stole her consciousness away.

* * *

She woke sitting sideways on the wide steady back of a broadhead, careful arms around her holding her as still as possible against a firm chest, though each thudding step of the machine still made a flash of pain burst through her.

“I’d seen this one waiting nearby when I followed the path of your handiwork and thought it must be yours,” Nil said conversationally, apparently aware at once that she was awake, “I don’t know how well I could have dodged it attempting to trample up while carrying you, so it’s lucky I was right.”

She let the words pass through her ears without fully processing them, looking down at herself. There were bandages around her stomach now, the binding neatly done though the cloth was really less clean than she’d have liked. There was one around his hand as well and she frowned at it muzzily, remembering a mouth full of blood. “I bit you, didn’t I? Sorry.”

He laughed and shrugged against her back. “If it is the only wound I am ever able to convince you to give me then I will wear it proudly.”

It took an incredible act of will for her to manage to turn enough in his arms to look up at him with narrowed eyes, “If you’re going to start up with that I’m passing back out,” she told him, every word feeling like such a struggle to get out that it seemed likely she would whatever the topic of conversation. She flopped once more against him, opening her eyes enough to take in the woods around them. “Where?” she asked, too tired and pained to add more to the question.

“Ruined places, far from men,” he said, shrugging slightly against her. “You might have thought I have a death wish, but to be a war criminal carrying the Sun-King’s savior and hero of the battle for Meridian to any doctors I still know of would be to court a surer death than I’m interested in. Worry not, I’ll see you fixed and off to slaughter your enemies before you’ve had time to even miss the smell of another’s blood.”

And strangely enough, mad and deadly though Nil was she found it easy enough to take it as his word not to worry. He’d proven himself to her that day back on the Mesa, when she’d refused his fight and he’d let her walk away with no attempt to force it, proven himself again that very morning when he’d clearly not even considered taking her up on her offer to fight, however weakly, to protect herself if he’d thought her past saving and decided to end it quick. She was in no danger from him.

So she leaned back into his arms once more, closed her eyes, and let the pull of unconsciousness grasp her again, safe in the knowledge that whenever, wherever, she woke up again he would see her safe.


End file.
